Money quote:

Throughout the region democracy means clean running water, decent roads, electricity, and education. It means free and fair elections and the refusal of arbitrary power, wherever it is exercised. Many sentiments and forces feed the trend. Muslims of faith appalled by discrimination and genocide. Garment industry workers struggling to form trade unions. Believers in dharma tired of military rule. Citizens angered by the destruction of local habitats by corporate vandals. Young people yearning for digital freedoms. Small entrepreneurs, as in South Korea, shaving their heads in protest at the damage done by Covid-19 lockdowns. Liberalism has no special claim on any of this resistance. To call it “liberal” or to emphasise its affinities with “liberalism” is a misdescription of things.